I have a little story for you!
You may or may not know this, but I’ve been drawing lately… a lot.
And all this drawing has added a whole new dimension to my business.
I’m telling this story for two reasons:
1. To share with you how finding a creative practice you love can be life altering.
2. And to show you exactly what rocking your WEIRD can do for you!
It started in earnest last fall.
Well, technically, I’ve been drawing since I was a wee child (we all have!), took lots of art classes while I was growing up and then majored in art.
When I graduated from college, I became a graphic designer. All of my creative energy went into designing all day and I stopped making art for myself.
Over the past few years, though, I’ve been doing more consulting and less design and last fall, I started to feel like something was missing.
I wasn’t really sure what it was, but I knew that I was feeling burned out…
Being an entrepreneur is really hard sometimes!
It’s stressful to constantly be exposing yourself to the world and if you’re like me, you’re not very good at ending the work day at a reasonable hour because there’s always more you ‘could’ be doing.
So yea, burned out.
When you’re burned out, all you wanna do is chill out and relax and enjoy yourself.
It turns out it can be surprisingly difficult to relax and enjoy yourself when you feel like there’s a lot to do. The guilt monster immediately showed up, throwing all kinds of profanity in my direction.
But that was the whole reason I had gotten myself into the mess of feeling burned out in the first place.
I was also having quite a hard time remembering what I *actually* liked to do for fun!
So, I decided to go way way back in the archives… to childhood!
I knew I liked to hang out in nature… so many, many walks ensued.
And while I was walking, I found a playground and rediscovered the swings, so I added that to my list. But, it turns out that adults without kids aren’t really welcome in playgrounds anymore so… that was just sort of awkward!
I read some of my fave books as a kid.
These things were all successful at helping me call up that glorious feeling of freedom and curiosity.
And then I dug out the art supplies…
It started with a few handmade cards and some futzing around with watercolors.
I liked it because I could make whatever the heck I wanted without having to think about pleasing anyone. It was all in the name of feeling good.
Over time, I noticed that I had naturally started gravitating towards making art whenever I was feeling overwhelmed by other things in my life or feeling creatively stuck and scared in my biz. I’m pretty amazed that in a matter of a few weeks, art making had officially been inducted into my subconscious as a tool to use to take me from feeling ‘UGH’ to feeling ‘WEEEEEEE!!!!’!!!!
And then my friend Mariah Neeson sent me this video on how to draw a mandala.
And EVERYTHING JUST EXPLODED!
I had always been very intrigued by mandalas but was way too intimidated by their intricacy to try drawing one (it turns out it’s insanely easy!).
Suddenly I was a drawing maniac. I couldn’t WAIT to draw everyday!
And then something really interesting happened… I noticed that what I was drawing completely reflected whatever was going on inside me – whatever I was struggling with, or celebrating, emotionally or mentally ended up on the page. Of course, I later found out that Carl Jung touted the mandala as a representation of the inner self which explained a lot.
Every time I drew a mandala, I discovered something new about myself or solved a life problem or transformed a crappy stressed out mood into a calm one… and in the rest of my life, I saw huge changes!
I started accepting and loving myself more, expressing myself more opening, I launched a passion project, I grew the ovarios needed to state what I wanted and needed, transforming several important relationships in my life and so so many other things.
So there I was… drawing my daily mandalas and loving it! (my handle is @poodlecat if you’re curious to see them – or you can look at the Instagram album on my Facebook page)
And other people were loving it, too! Any time someone would email me or call me, they’d bring up the mandalas and how much they were enjoying them. I was really surprised by just how into them people were!
So I decided to package up all the stuff I had been exploring through my daily mandalas into a drawing workshop to see if other peeps would want to experience (and re-experience) just how effing awesome drawing is!! And thus Be Drawsome! was born.
And it turns out that all kinds of people, artists and non-artists, are super excited about drawing!! WOOHOOOO!!
Something that’s been there all along but that I had no clue would transform me and have such an impact on the people around me. So there you have it, the 10 month process of seeking, playing, discovering and sharing a deep part of myself.
The lesson: go after what makes you feel good,
enjoy the heck out of it and share it with others.
Be your weird self and you will totally changes lives!
If you’re curious to explore drawing, would love to have you in the latest Be Drawsome! Workshop! Check it out here!
